President Blames Doctors for Health Care Costs

There were too many falsehoods in President Obama’s healthcare press conference to cram into one column. But three of them show just how far this president is willing to ignore the truth to push his political agenda. And people are starting to catch on.

Obama said that doctors order procedures based on how much money they’d pocket. It’s an outrage—nothing short of pathetic—that this politician of all of people would dare impugn the character and medical judgment of our nation’s doctors. Yet that’s exactly what Barack Obama did.

The president actually blames doctors, citing how they “test, test, test.” Doctors test because of predatory trial lawyers that Barack Obama refuses to rein in. Doctors practice defensive medicine, often based not on medical needs but instead on their risk management’s advice on what tests are needed to shield them from lawsuits if the patient has any complications or ongoing problems. A doctor often needs to run a test again, even if they see the previous doctor’s results, because if not they can still be sued for medical malpractice. This costs over $75 billion a year, driving up costs and making insurance less affordable.

The way to fix that is tort reform, capping damage awards for non-economic damages (pain and suffering) and punitive damages, and stopping junk lawsuits. Yet Obama won’t, because the trial lawyers oppose it and they are the single largest financial contributor to the Democratic Party.

President Obama also said that there are 47 million Americans without health coverage. That number is wrong, and grossly misleads the public about the scope of this problem.

There are about 47 million uninsured people, but not all of them are Americans. In fact, over 10 million of them are illegal aliens. Obama doesn’t talk about this, but almost a quarter of the uninsured in this country are here illegally and are not entitled anything.

Many more are here legally, but are not Americans. Many people here from other countries with family or on a temporary visa don’t have insurance, and go to the emergency room when they get sick because federal law requires every emergency room to treat everyone regardless of whether they have insurance.

Beyond that, around 14 million of the uninsured are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP, and simply don’t bother to sign up. How does a government takeover help people who don’t even avail themselves of a free program that already covers them?

Ken Klukowski is a bestselling author and Townhall’s legal contributor covering the U.S. Supreme Court, and a fellow with the Family Research Council, American Civil Rights Union, and Liberty University School of Law.